


build your kingdom in my heart (if you want)

by singsongsung



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French, Dublin Murders (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mentions of Abortion, Mentions of Murder, canon-typical triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:01:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22246006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: They live in a haunted house.Sam, Cassie, and sometimes Rob, in the aftermath.
Relationships: Cassie Maddox/Sam O'Neill, past Cassie Maddox/Rob Ryan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 26





	build your kingdom in my heart (if you want)

**Author's Note:**

> I have loved Tana French for years, and after watching the recent television adaptation of the first two novels in the Murder Squad series, I was struck with All The Feelings and had to write this. 
> 
> This is in keeping with book canon ( _In the Woods_ and _The Likeness_ ), but I think it also fits as a coda to the TV show. 
> 
> I'm not Irish, so I apologize for any incongruities in vernacular. I tried to keep as close as possible to Sam's voice in the novels. 
> 
> Title is from The Glorious Sons' "Kingdom In My Heart."
> 
> If you read, please drop me a few words to let me know your thoughts!

_all i am_  
_is a man_  
_i want the world_  
_in my hands_  
\- the neighbourhood, "sweater weather"

They live in a haunted house.

Cassie hadn’t been into the idea of buying - it made her twitchy, the permanence of it - but when he’d first introduced the idea she’d given him those eyes of her, big and veiled by lashes, and that dig of her teeth into the tender spot inside her bottom lip, a gesture you’d only notice if you were looking closely enough, and she said, in a way that made her sound so very much like his wife: “Ah, sure.”

She’d followed the estate agent through listings with her detective’s face on, her expression perfectly neutral, her eyes nearly flat, like the chirping woman showing them master baths with a flourish of her arm was an unpredictable suspect. She scowled at the kitchens’ marble countertops and the ever-present wainscoting, and Sam thought, well. They’d tried.

But the estate agent was cleverer than even Sam would've guessed, and that night she e-mailed them a listing. It wasn’t a new build, but an older home, in slightly better shape that your average fixer-upper, settled on the edge of a neighbourhood, bordering a ravine in which it seemed to be threatening to immerse itself. Cassie’d peered at it on the small screen of his phone, her hair tousled from sleep, one of his t-shirts hanging loosely over her shoulders.

“No harm in looking,” she’d said, and they’d gone over the very next afternoon, the old door creaking open lazily, beams of sun illuminating the dust in the musty air.

They bought that house. Of course they did.

The day she came back to him, the day she shed Lexie like a snakeskin and became Cassie again - it was one of the best days of Sam’s life. He’d gone to her flat with a diamond ring in his pocket and the expectation of a break-up heavy on his shoulders, but an hour later Cassie was wearing that ring and saying she’d be okay if she could never get back into Murder and crawling onto his lap, her knees on either side of his hips. Her eyes were as wide as his felt, both of them pleasantly stunned by the turn the day had taken, and when she kissed him -

When she kissed him it was slow, something you could sink into, a duvet cover pulled over heads on a rainy Sunday morning. He could feel her exhaustion in her body, the way her chest pressed firmly against his, the weight of her arms slung lazily around his neck. Their kiss was imbued with that tiredness too, yet its slowness was sweet as anything; it was tender in a way that pulled at the muscle of his heart.

Sam could’ve lived in that kiss forever.

With their names scrawled on all the paperwork ( _Samuel O’Neill_ and _Cassandra Maddox_ , still), they lug overstuffed boxes through their new creaking front door, and that very first day, when their bed is still an uncovered mattress on the floor, the sheets lost somewhere in the shuffle, the new bedframe on order, they paint the kitchen. Cassie picked the colour when they were still in escrow: a blue so mellow, so light, it makes everything feel airy; the shade of the sky in the morning just after the oranges and pinks have faded away.

They turn the music up loud and Sam sweeps Cassie into his arms, waltzes her across the tile and twirls her beneath his arm. He has two left feet, but she laughs and falls into his chest and gives him the dimpling smile he adores. He boosts her up onto the countertop to do the parts near the ceiling, and stamps the arse of her combat trousers with two painted handprints.

“Oh, aren’t you asking for it,” she says through a grin, and sweeps her brush right over his hair.

Paints splatters over her bare feet. Every one of her toes seems, to him, impossibly precious.

In between their engagement and their wedding, Cassie went back to finish her psychology degree. She said she’d been acting like a student for weeks; may as well do it for real. She enrolled at DCU, and with what Sam imagined was a bit of wide-eyed, sweet-smiled pleading, she managed to leverage her almost-complete Trinity degree and get the Head of School to let her start in year three.

They spent a lot of time, both at her flat and his house, with hunched shoulders and pens in hand and music playing softly enough not to distract. Cassie would chew the end of her pen as she read through her textbook, and Sam would try not to let all his questionnaires and photocopies and other case paraphernalia infringe on her space too much. He liked Cassie as a student, her hair held out of her face with a complicated configuration of pencils, reminders scribbled in blue ink on her forearm, the tiny wrinkle in her nose when she encountered something that didn’t immediately make sense to her. He liked Cassie as a student, but he worried about her, too.

(That night, after Operation Mirror, when she made him promises in her bed, she had a nightmare. Sam was torn from sleep by the frantic movement of her legs and her pleading voice, _Justin, no_ , and _Daniel, listen to me, please_.

He woke her as gently as he could, and her eyes were so big they seemed to take up half her face. For a terrifying moment, she didn’t seem to recognize him, not until he said, “Sweetheart, it’s me…” and she burst into tears.

It was the first time he ever saw Cassie cry, and he wondered, as she wept and wept, if she’d been holding those tears in for as long as he’d known her. He held her, extricating himself only to grab her tissues and a glass of water, and when she’d finally cried herself out she felt boneless in his arms, a shell of herself. He murmured, “Shh,” soothingly, even though she wasn’t making a sound, and she pulled herself away from him with great effort.

“Sam,” she said, in a voice so small it didn’t sound like her own. She waved her left hand through the air helplessly, gesturing at it, and the ring, with her right, and he understood the wordless question: _is this really the woman you want to marry?_

He took her left hand and kissed her knuckles and made her a promise of his own. “Cass,” he said, “you’re going to be okay.”)

The first night, they leave the kitchen windows cracked open and finally find the bedding, and they make up the mattress in silent, easy, cooperative movements. Cassie peels off her shirt, unhooks her bra, and shimmies out of her trousers and knickers, leaving her clothes in a pile on the floor. She raises a cheeky eyebrow at him and he follows suit, shedding his clothes and meeting her at the foot of their mattress, which looks somewhat pathetic alone in the middle of the bedroom floor. Cassie leans into him and lays her lips on his bare chest, right over his heart.

They’re in a tangle of limbs within seconds of hitting the sheets, Cassie sighing and her fingers curling around his bicep as he slips a hand between her legs. She seems to think he’s just getting her ready for him, but Sam wants more than that. He wants to watch his wife come in this sparse bedroom in the house they’re making a home, and he wants every day to be as honeyed and smooth as this one has been.

“ _Oh_ ,” Cassie breathes as he does just what she likes with his thumb on her clit. There are no curtains on the windows and in the moonlight he can see the peaks of her nipples, the flexing muscles in her stomach, the flutter of her eyelashes. He sucks a nipple into his mouth and listens to her keen, and when he lifts his head he can see her teeth digging into her bottom lip.

“Cassie,” he murmurs against her jaw. “Sweetheart, look at me.” When she does, pupils blown out and jaw tightening with building pleasure, he tells her, “I’m right here. I’ve got you. Let go.”

Seconds later, she does, mouth stretched open in a silent cry, head tipped back into the pillow, fingernails digging into his arm. He lets her get a bit of her breath back, waits until she’s stroking her thumb over the marks she left on his skin with her nails, and then moves into her, catching her mewl of pleasure in his mouth with a kiss.

She moans, “ _Sam_ ,” which might just be his favourite sound, and they breathe each other’s air, lips brushing as he buries himself inside her. She’s sensitive still, so it doesn’t take long, and when she topples over the edge she takes him with her, his groan pressed into her cheek. He collapses next to her, both of them breathing hard.

“Good?” he asks after a moment, reaching over to brush her hair off her sweaty forehead.

Cassie smiles, soft and sated. “Very,” she says, curling up against him.

She gets up to pee a couple minutes later, and Sam’s left alone on his back on the mattress, feeling deeply satisfied with his life. It’s then, in the moonlight, through half-closed eyes, that he thinks he sees a tall figure lurking in the corner, a mirthless smirk shining in the place its mouth should be.

They haven’t set up a lamp yet, so Sam gropes for a his phone and flicks on the torch, his heart racing.

There is, of course, no one there. Rob Ryan is not wandering about their home, watching Sam fuck his ex partner.

Their wedding was small, mostly family (mostly _his_ family, really) and a few mutual friends-slash-coworkers. It wasn’t a big to-do; a ceremony and then a get-together with drinks and what the pub they rented out for the evening insisted on calling hors d’ouevres. The top part of Cassie’s dress was ivory, with the thinnest little straps on her shoulders and crisscrossing over her back, and the bottom, which flared out gently from her hips, was dyed in all the blue shades of a stormy sky. She looked so beautiful that Sam couldn’t stop grinning, not even when he kissed her.

For the honeymoon they went to Italy, ten days of heat and sex and gelato and wine and da Vinci. Cassie was in pasta heaven, and Sam ate pizza for all three of his meals one day. At night Cassie would trace the pads of her fingers over his wedding band, like its existence was a marvel. She teased him about how much he liked being called her husband, throwing it into conversation at every opportunity: _my husband and I made a reservation; could you point me and my husband to the metro?; my husband will take the cheque, grazie_. In the evenings she’d drop her hotel-issue robe off one shoulder and say, _I wonder if my husband would screw me senseless_ and Sam didn’t care how much of a Neanderthal it made him - it always worked.

Back in Dublin, there was a dead man waiting for him and a letter waiting for her: acceptance to postgrad in psychology at Trinity. Reality descended around them again fast and heavy, but he picked her up and spun her around and said, “My wife’s the smartest woman in the world.”

She wrapped her legs around him and kissed him soundly. “My husband’s a pretty damn good detective,” she said, “and he better go find a suspect.”

His adoration for Cassie has always been bubbling beneath the surface, eager to boil over and show itself. He remembers her first day on Murder, her carefully careless attitude, and how he’d found her beautiful, not like a model in a magazine ad, but in a striking way, those dark curls and dark eyes, the delicacy of her hands. He knew it’d be impossible to date her, given they were on the same squad, and then later he figured it would be more impossible still to interrupt whatever she had with Ryan, even if he wanted to see her outside work clandestinely.

He tried to keep his thoughts about Cassie at an even simmer, one that could be left on the stove and ignored, but it was difficult, listening to her quick-witted comments and her laughter, watching her face as that whip-smart mind of hers lined up the facts and drew brilliant conclusions. When he joined Operation Vestal, he couldn’t squash how he felt anymore: his pot runneth over.

It was only two weeks after their first kiss that he knew he wanted to marry Cass. As soon as he could love her, her did.

For Cassie, it was slower; he knows that, doesn’t resent it, understands that she can only open one of the locked doors inside her soul at a time.

But he knows she adores him, too. He knows it when he’s working a hard case and she’s got coffee ready to help him through the night; when those cases come along that still feel like they’ve got their hands around his throat, squeezing tight, even after he’s got a confession, and she tucks her legs beneath her on the sofa and pulls his head against her chest and presses her nose into his hair as he cries. He knows it the mornings she slips into the shower with him, giving him an excuse to be late ( _traffic’ll be awful in that rain_ ) and drops to her knees and takes him into her mouth, and after, when she turns her back to him so that he can wash her hair, and he listens to her purr like a housecat at the feeling of his dull nails on her scalp. He knows it because Cassie would subsist on pasta alone, given the choice, but she stands at his elbow while he makes curries and ratatouille and enchiladas, handing him spices, and because when he works late, she’ll try to replicate one of those dishes and it’ll taste just a little strange and the kitchen will be a mess, and she’ll smile softly at him for pretending that it’s good and dig a bag of crisps out of a cupboard. He knows it from the way she hardly ever sleeps without touching him: an ankle hooked over his, her arse against his hip, her fingertips on his chest and her hair all over his face. He knows that when she chose him, when she held out her hand so he could slip his ring onto her finger, she did it with the knowledge that she might never make it back to Murder, and the unspoken thing in the air was that she felt he was worth it, that potentially significant loss.

They are good together, Sam thinks. Their marriage is a happy one.

They are happy together, and happy in their home, but still - sometimes he wakes at night to the sound of a young girl’s laughter, the precise sound of the toe of a pointe shoe hitting the hallway floor, and knows Cassie’s awake too, breathing quietly with her knee pressed into his thigh.

The bedroom is furnished, they’ve purchased a plant they’re both struggling to keep alive, and Cassie has plunged headfirst into her master’s program the first time Sam encounters Lexie. Cassie comes home with something wild at the corners of her eyes, and he abandons his chicken tikka masala recipe to go to her, a hand gentle on her shoulder, the way he’d treat a murder witness.

“Someone recognized me today,” she says in a detached voice. “Recognized Lexie.”

Sam’s teeth clench together as he tries to keep his concern from flooding his face. “Cass - ”

“I thought if Abby was done, then most people who might’ve known me - known her - would be too, but I guess some people linger on - ”

“What did you do?”

Cassie looks like she’s surprised at the question. “I pretended I was her. Said I was well, thanked the girl when she said I looked good. Mumbled something about the Brontёs. Lexie’s death was never exactly announced.”

There’s an ever-so-slight edge of hysteria creeping into her voice, and Sam rubs her arm. “Was that - are you okay?”

She swallows, hard. “Of course.” She nods at him. “Of course.”

In the next room over, Lexie laughs, loud and long and boisterous.

They’re coming up on the first anniversary of their marriage, Cassie buried in her degree and Sam bogged down in cases, making time for one another late in the evenings, two fingers of whiskey each, slow sex in front of the fireplace they’ve finally made functional, when he hears her rummaging in the bathroom, followed by a quiet murmur of, “Shit.”

He goes over and leans against the doorjamb. “Alright, Cass?”

She glances at him briefly and then slides a packet across the countertop, full of small, empty spaces that once held pills. “Forgot to renew this,” she says. “I don’t think I can go until next week, I have to start that clinical rota tomorrow - ”

Sam takes a couple slow steps into the room, his eyes on the used-up sleeve of pills. “Cassie,” he says slowly, not sure if this is the right time for this conversation, but taking a chance on it anyway.

It’s not. She cuts her gaze to him sharply, and he knows to shut up. He tosses the empty packet into the bin for her and touches a hand to the small of her back. “I’ll buy condoms tomorrow,” he says easily, and she nods, leaving the bathroom without another word.

(He never checked, not for sure. Cassie hardly looked like a fine specimen of health after Operation Vestal - cheeks a little sunken, eyes a little glazed, shoulders always sneaking up toward her ears - but that one Monday, he’d ushered her home and put a mug in her hands and made her stew because she looked even worse for wear, her skin pale with a greyish tint, seeming unsteady even when she sat.

Sam is a detective: it wouldn’t have been hard to find out if Cassie spent the weekend in England, and it barely would’ve been harder to find out if she was at a clinic. But it wasn’t his business, what she’d done or what she’d had to do, what exactly had happened between her and Rob before their friendship and partnership and maybe-something-moreship had gone up in flames. His business was the Cassie in front of him, whose wince when she sat down was nearly negligible, just the slightest upward twitch of her lower eyelids, and who needed something warm: in her hands, in her stomach, in her life.

But Sam is a detective. Suspecting is his life’s work.)

Sometimes he runs into Rosalind on the stairs. She sits with her knees pressed demurely together, her hair in a single plait, her head tilted in put-on confusion like _he’s_ the one who doesn’t belong, like she knows secrets that he doesn’t.

With a good shake of his head, she always disappears, but it unnerves him afterward for five minutes, or maybe ten, perhaps fifteen.

Sam fucking hates family murders.

Cassie brings it up, six or seven months after Sam’s initial thwarted attempt. She swallows a pill and sets down her glass of water and says, “When this pack is done, I - ” She draws in a breath. “I don’t have to renew it.”

Sam’s heart leaps, eagerly, into his throat. “D’you mean that?” he asks quietly, cautiously.

Her expression is guarded, too, just a little. “Do you want me to keep taking the pills?”

He shakes his head automatically, but says, “We both have to be in on this decision, Cass. It can’t just be me.”

Cassie runs her tongue over her bottom lip. “You’d be a wonderful father,” she says softly.

And she’d be a wonderful mother, he knows she would; she’d teach their child such courage and kindness. He can sense, though, that this isn’t the moment to tell her as much. He reaches out, slips an arm around her waist, and pulls her into his lap.

“Do you want a baby, Cassie?” he asks simply.

She gives him a small smile that’s almost helpless. “I don’t know, Sam. But I think I… want your baby.” She takes another deep breath. “Our baby. Your smile, your eyes - ”

“No,” he cuts in gently, touching her face. “These eyes.”

Her smile, this time, is a little more sure. “Are we going to argue about something we can’t control?”

“I’ll have a chat with your eggs,” he says, mock-solemn, but he keeps his eyes on hers. “Are you sure, Cassie?”

Her fingers are soft on his skin, tracing the lines of his face. “I _love_ you,” she says, and he understands that that’s her answer.

When they make love that night he hears Cassie’s pleased sounds and her dirty whispers against the shell of his ear, but he hears something else too, a silence, deep and dark and caustic. It could be Rob’s anger, Rob’s grief, or it could be Lexie’s, but either way, the question is the same: _What about me? What about my baby?_

The trees at the edge of their property play tricks on Sam’s vision. Sometimes the wind rustles the leaves in artistic whirls that make him think of a ballerina’s tutu. Sometimes there is movement low to the ground, a hushed and giggly _shhh!_ and out of the corner of his eye he sees three shapes, backs to him, running away, Peter and Adam and Jamie, frozen in their youth. Sometimes there is a sharp, whistling breeze that sounds like Rosalind Devlin’s victorious laughter. Sometimes he could swear that Rob is there, hands pressed to a tree, anguish painted across his face until Sam’s vision blurs and clears again, revealing nothing but nature.

He catches Cassie watching the trees sometimes, too, squinting oh-so-slightly. When she spots him she turns away, returns to whatever task is at hand, and pretends it never happened at all.

Sam takes her lead, as he does with so many things.

They’re in a middle of an argument - a fairly mild one, but an argument nonetheless, Cassie with that flint-switch temper of hers - about Sam committing to a dinner with his family without asking her first, when Cassie, perched on the arm of the sofa with her arms crossed over her chest, blurts, “I’m pregnant.”

The breath goes right out of Sam’s lungs. “What?”

She stands up slowly, arms still wrapped around herself. “I’m pregnant,” she repeats.

“Cass…” He moves toward her, his gaze dropping to her stomach. “Cassie.” A smile is starting to tug at his mouth, unbidden and unstoppable. “When did you… ?”

“A couple weeks ago,” she says softly, to the carpet.

It feels like he stops breathing again. “ _Weeks_ … ago…?” he echoes, incredulous.

The way she shifts her weight, from one foot to the next and then up onto her toes, like there’s the memory of a balance beam beneath her, tells Sam she knows she’s in the wrong here, that the guilty grimace she wears is sincere.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, soft as a sigh, looking up. “I had to - I had to wait ’til it felt… permanent.”

There is a shadow behind Cassie, just outside the room’s arched doorway, in the half-light: the same build and height, an almost-perfect facsimile, save for the fringe falling over her heavily kohl-rimmed eyes. Lexie’s shadow hands move, lifting her shirt so that she can inspect a stomach that betrays no signs of pregnancy. Blood blooms between her ribs, suddenly, and runs down her body in an ominous trail.

“Oh, Cass,” he murmurs, rubbing at his forehead.

“It’s… about six weeks now, I think. I feel - ” She breathes out something that’s almost a laugh. “I feel like _shit_ , the smell of everything makes me nauseous…”

“We don’t have to go to dinner,” Sam says, then, “Cassie…” He reaches out to her, flattening a hand against her abdomen.

The smile on her lips is small but entirely real. “You’re going to be a daddy.”

A laugh falls out of his mouth then, bright and full of joy. He kisses her mouth firmly and then drops kisses all over the rest of her face, her cheeks, her forehead, her nose, even her eyelids, until she’s laughing, too. He ducks down and presses his lips to her stomach, and he feels her fingers slide fondly through his hair.

He gathers her into a hug then, overwhelmed with happiness, with his love for her, for the baby they’re having. She squeezes him back, pressing her face into his chest.

When he lets her go, she says, “I thought… if it’s a girl, I thought we might call her Grace.”

Sam nods, his hands coming to rest on her hips. “That’s a beautiful name.” He watches her for a beat, then asks, with only a sliver of hesitation, “And for a boy?”

Cassie’s face is unreadable for an instant, and then she cracks a grin, “Frank, obviously,” she says, and then they’re laughing all over again.

In the end, they never need to choose a name for a boy. Grace Imogen O’Neill is born on a cloudless day in May, emerging into the world with an indignant cry and a firm grasp on Sam’s heart. He touches Cassie’s sweat-soaked hair and watches her marvel at their daughter, her tiny fingers and rosebud mouth. Her love is painted over every one of the planes of her face, and the sight of it causes Sam’s chest to clench in the most wonderful way.

Grace is swaddled in a blanket and given a little hat and placed carefully in his arms, and Sam meets her bleary, surprised eyes with his own. His throat is full of emotion. “A chuisle mo chroí,” he whispers to his new little girl. Cassie’s Irish is even rustier than his own, but he hears the little catch in her breathing; she understands the sentiment, if not the exact meaning. When he looks at her he sees tears in her eyes and streaked down her cheeks - only the second time, in all the years he’s known her, that he’s seen Cassie cry.

“Sweetheart,” he says, scared to give up one of the arms holding Grace to reach for her. She reaches out instead, touching her fingertips to the blanket that holds their baby.

“I’m happy,” she assures him tearfully. “Love you, Sam.”

“Cass,” he breathes with a small shake of his head, looking from her to Grace and back again. “You have no idea.”

Their first night home with the baby is, unsurprisingly, a hard one, full of Grace’s wailing and Cassie’s soft pleas with the baby to latch. Sam paces back and forth along the upstairs hallway with Grace in his arms, murmuring soothingly to her, while Cassie takes a few minutes to doze. He sees flickers of movement in his peripheral vision - down the stairs, inside a room - but he ignores them studiously.

As Grace gets older, she keeps the fair hair she sprouted shortly after her birth but her eyes grow darker, a perfect match to her mother’s ( _guess that chat you had with my eggs worked out_ , Cassie teases him with a roll of her eyes). She is bright and silly and, as far as Sam is concerned, perfect.

He calls her Gracie; Cassie tends to stick with Grace. Cass is, as he knew she’d be, a good mother, calm and nurturing, always prepared to hunt out monsters under the bed, matching their little girl’s silliness with her own, willing to play bad cop when Sam can’t quite manage it. She takes Grace to baby ballet classes and makes nice with the helicopter mums, holding in all her eye-rolling until she's home again.

Grace loves to play outside, grass stains on the knees of all her little trousers, weeds ( _flowers, Daddy!_ she insists) in her hair. Cassie is always out there with her, turning cartwheels and swinging Grace around, even when she needs to be writing up notes after sessions with patients at the psychology clinic she's joined. Sam thinks she might mistrust the trees and the darkness that emerges between their trunks, and he can’t say that he blames her. If, between the branches, she sees a scared little boy called Adam or a brittle man called Rob, she never mentions it to him.

O’Kelly has a heart attack when Gracie is three, and dies. Sam is all set to have one of his sisters watch her so he and Cassie can go to the service, but Cassie says no, says they should bring Grace along. Sam balks at the idea.

“She’s too young,” he says, mobile still in hand, his sister’s phone number under his thumb.

Cassie gives him a gentle look. “There’s no such thing as too young.” To soften her statement, she adds, “I know you want the squad to meet her. You print a new picture for that frame on your desk twice a week.”

“It’s not exactly the occasion I had in mind,” he grumbles.

“She’ll be good,” Cassie assures him. “And she can handle it.”

He looks at Gracie, settled on the rug with her teddy bears. “Alright,” he says, though he doesn’t quite mean it.

They dress their daughter in a navy dress with a pattern of stars along the hem - it’s the most appropriate thing in her wardrobe for a funeral - and themselves in black suits. Grace babbles softly to a doll in the backseat on the way there, and Cassie asks him, softly, “How are you?”

“Ah, alright,” Sam says, tugging at the knot in his tie. “It’s a sad thing, sure. He was a bit of a dick - not to speak ill of the dead - but he was a good detective.”

“He was,” she agrees, reaching over to give his knee a squeeze.

There’s quite a crowd, when they arrive. They stand fairly close to the front, with the other members of the squad and their families; some of them give a surprised blink at the sight of Gracie, but then they smile at her, and at Cassie, and ask quietly how she’s doing, and say isn’t their daughter a darling thing. During the service, Gracie leans against one of his legs, her hand secured in his. His other hand is entwined with Cassie’s, and as sad as the day is, there is a floating sensation in Sam’s chest - this is exactly what he’s always wanted.

When the service is over, they offer their condolences to O'Kelly's family and start engaging in strategic discussions with the squad, Cassie scooping Gracie up and offering to take the little girl home on her own so that Sam can go get a pint, others protesting that they’d like to catch up with her, they see old Sam all the time. They turn, reluctantly, to include Quigley in the conversation, and right there, ten feet in front of them, is Rob Ryan.

Sam’s hand goes immediately to Cassie’s arm. He finds it stiff - she’s noticed him too. He looks at her, but she doesn’t look at him, so acting on instinct, he murmurs something along the lines of _just a minute_ to the rest of the squad and extracts them from the group.

Rob approaches when they’re on their own, his expression edging toward sardonic but too sad to quite get there. Sam thinks he probably knows the basic facts - they’re married, they have a child, Cassie’s become a psychologist - but likely little more. “Maddox,” he says, simply, as he comes to a stop. “Or is it O’Neill now?” He offers Sam a nod of acknowledgement, which Sam returns.

“Ryan,” Cassie says automatically. Her skin has gone rather white beneath her makeup. “I kept my name.”

Robs nods, and maybe attempts a smile, and then the two of them just look at each other, eyes locked in such a way that suggests that they could stay that way for a decade or two. Cassie’s Rob-shape wound, unlike the gash through her ribs, never got the attention it deserved; no stitches, no ointment, no tending. It’s stayed raw, and, Sam suspects, it probably always will. He can’t say if the same is true for Rob, but from the identical way they’re staring at each other, he suspects it might be so.

There is a stretch of quiet that lasts and lasts. She’s always been good at silence, Cassie, but right now Sam can see her casting around for something to say, and she lands on the simplest thing, an introduction to the small face that rests against her shoulder. “This - ” She has to stop and cough, clearing her throat. “Rob, this is Grace. She’s three.”

“Hello, Grace,” Rob says in a careful, neutral tone.

And Gracie, she says - either because she’s so used to addressing most of the adults around her in this way, or because she senses, preternaturally, the strength of the bonds between her mother and this unknown man - she says, “Hello, Uncle Rob.”

Cassie flinches, a full body thing that ripples through every one of her muscles and snaps her head back, startling their daughter. Rob’s response to her flinching is equally emphatic, a deep cringing expression that descends over his entire face, from his hairline (a little further back, now, that Sam remembers it being) to his chin. The slight discomfort Sam has felt, watching them, feeling flashes of the first days he worked with Maddox and Ryan, all their in-jokes and flickering glances and tilts of head that seemed packed with meaning he’d never understand - it melts away into a sorrow so profound that he aches for Cassie, and for Rob, and even for himself.

Rob is the one who finally manages to speak into the taut air that surrounds them, pulled so tight it feels like it could snap and turn into a bolt of lighting. “You… look good, Cass,” he says, in a low voice that seeps with sadness; Sam’s not sure if he’s trying to hide it or not, but it’s there, all the same. “You have a beautiful family.”

Cassie stays quiet, eyes pinned to Rob’s face like if she blinks he might vanish, so Sam is the one who says, “Thank you.”

In response, Rob gives him another nod, small and short. He takes a step backward, easing away from the encounter, retreating back to god-knows-what.

“Ryan,” Cassie says, her voice cracking between the syllables. “I hope you’re well.”

He smiles, a wistful thing that doesn’t work itself into the corners of his mouth evenly. “Always with the hopes for me, Maddox. Should know better, shouldn’t you?” He shoves his hands, in fists, into the pockets of his coat. “I had hopes for you too. I’m glad someone’s came true.”

And with one last, long look at her face, he turns and is gone, slipping away into the crowd of mourners.

Sam’s not entirely sure what to say, or do. Cassie’s still staring at the spot where Rob stood, her lips parted slightly like she has more she wants to say.

It’s Gracie who calls her back, a little hand on Cassie’s cheek, a question bordering on a whine, “Mummy?”

Cassie blinks once, twice, and then looks at their daughter. “My sweet girl,” she says quietly, the subtlest shake in her voice. She turns her head and kisses the center of Gracie’s palm. “Do you want to go home now?”

Gracie nods, and Sam takes it as his cue to step forward, wrapping an arm around Cassie’s shoulders, his fingers brushing Gracie’s arm. “Home it is,” he says, and Cassie looks at him. Her eyes are full, brimming with a thousand things, but they’re here, right here with him and Grace, not trapped elsewhere, not sifting through the past, and he decides not to push for anything more. He decides that it’s enough.

In the car, Grace falls asleep almost instantly, but Sam doesn’t take the opportunity to speak. He waits for his wife, who is twisting her wedding rings on her finger, round and round and round.

“What I told you,” Cassie says when they’re halfway home, her voice with a scratchy quality like she hasn’t used it in a long time, “the day you asked me to marry you, it was the truth. The honest truth. Whatever there was between Rob and me - whatever… whatever feelings, they’re over.”

Sam nods, keeping his eyes on the road.

“It’s just hard,” she says to her lap in a painful whisper; Sam thinks they might be on the verge of the third time he’ll see her cry. “It’s just fucking hard.”

“I know, Cassie,” he says, sympathetic but not quite able to make his way to empathy.

“ _Do_ you know?” she demands suddenly. She glances at the rearview mirror, making sure Grace is still asleep. “Do you know, really?”

He looks over at her quickly. “Just because I don’t generally have a partner, doesn’t mean I didn’t understand what that partnership meant to the two of you. I worked with you. I saw you. And I saw you… after.”

“Not that,” Cassie says, her hands balling into frustrated fists. “That it was the truth. What I promised you.”

Sam looks in her direction again, surprised. “I believe you, Cass. ’Course I do.”

She blows out an exasperated breath. “But do you _know_ it?”

He’s quiet for a moment. He’s not trying to start a fight, but he doesn’t think he can give her the answer she’s looking for. Finally he says, “I’m not sure of the difference.”

Cassie swallows audibly and fixes her eyes on the road ahead. Sam doubts she’s seeing streets or cars or bushes; he’s sure she’s somewhere else.

After several minutes, she checks again that their daughter is fast asleep, and pitches her voice low when she says, “When Daniel March shot at me - ”

“Cassie,” Sam says, an automatic reaction, cringing - it isn’t a day he likes to revisit, and he finds himself throwing his own frantic glance toward the backseat, needing to be sure that Grace isn’t hearing this.

Cassie doesn’t stop: “I’d heard that when someone’s about to die, or they think they’re about to die, they call for their mammy. My mother had been dead for so long - I knew that wasn’t something I’d do. I was kind of scared, to be honest, that I’d have nothing to say, that there wouldn’t be anyone that I’d want, in that moment.” Her jaw works, and she continues, softly, “But I did. I did have someone’s name to say.” She looks right at him, her gaze fixed on his face. “I said yours.”

Sam wants to close his eyes, but settles for gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles go white. “Cass,” he says, when he’s managed to loosen his grip a bit. “Sweetheart. I - ” He looks for a place to pull over; he wants to unbuckle his seatbelt and pull her to him and hold her while she cries, maybe even cry with her.

She sees what he’s thinking of and shakes her head. “Don’t stop,” she says, not angrily, but firmly. “Take us home.”

In the drive, Cassie undoes her seatbelt but makes no move to go anywhere. “She should be in her bed,” she says, nodding back at Gracie.

Sam understands immediately. “You’re not coming in.”

“I need to take the car. I need to - ” She gives her head an abrupt shake, like she’s struggling to find the words to explain what she needs to do.

Hand on the door handle, Sam stays still. “I love you, Cassie,” he tells her seriously.

One side of her bottom lip juts out the smallest amount. “I love you, too.”

He gathers Gracie into his arms - she mumbles sleepily but doesn’t quite wake - cupping the back of her head with his hand, and looks at Cassie once more before he heads for the door. Rosalind is leaning against it in one of her heartbroken-heroine outfits, wearing that faux coy expression of hers, and when she speaks to him, it’s in the over-innocent voice she used to use with Rob.

“Oh, _no_ ,” she says, and Sam can feel it, the way she’s relishing this moment, even though she isn’t real. “Do you think she’s coming back?”

Cassie comes back - _of course_ she does, Sam tells himself, but it’s still a burst of pure relief to see the headlights. He grabs some case notes at random and tries to pretend he hasn’t been pacing around the house, waiting for her.

She comes in through the kitchen door, and he meets her - moving slowly, still trying not to seem desperate - at the table. She sheds her coat and then shrugs out of her suit jacket; the shirt she’s wearing underneath is grey and silky and sleeveless, and god, she’s beautiful, and god, he loves her. She’s brought a bag with her, and it sits on the table, calling to him.

“Needed to do some shopping?” he asks, trying to keep things light.

“Where’s Grace?” she responds.

“On the iPad,” he says wryly; they like to try and pretend that their parenting style leaves them above giving in to technology. “Parental controls on and all.”

Cassie nods and takes a box out of the bag. It’s wrapped in rosy pink paper and tied with ribbon and a bow. “I had to get you this.”

“You had to get me… a gift?”

“I didn’t ask for it wrapped,” she says impatiently. “The girl just started doing it, so I let her.” She exhales, clearly trying to calm herself, and looks up into his face, firmly shorter than him now without her heels. “Open it. Please.”

Sam does. He tries to be careful, but as with every gift he’s ever received, the paper is a torn-up mess by the time he’s done. There’s an unmarked paper box under it, and he opens that too.

Inside is a bowl, blue in colour with several streaks of gold running through it in no identifiable pattern. “A - a bowl,” he says, taking it out, trying to figure out what exactly is going on in her head.

Cassie drops into a chair at the table. “It’s kintsugi. It’s Japanese art. It’s - ” She touches the gold streaks. “These are its fault lines. The bowl broke, and this was how it was put back together. Still a good bowl.” She pauses, considering. “Maybe even a nicer one, now.”

Sam lowers himself into a chair as well. “I want to say thank you, Cass, but I don’t - ”

She interrupts: “This is what you did to me. Don’t you see that? I was in about fifty shards after Operation Vestal, and about twenty after Operation Mirror, and you - ” She taps one of the golden lines. “This is what you did to me.”

He looks at the bowl, and then at her, at that face he’s never known how to look away from, how not to notice. “Cassie,” he says on an exhale of his own. “No. You - ”

Her hand lands on one of his. “I know you know I’m strong, Sam. I love that about you. I know you know I can be a stubborn bitch sometimes; I know you want to say that I would have figured out how to do it myself. But I wouldn’t’ve. Not how I was, and if I _had_ , somehow, it wouldn’t have looked anything like this. You reminded me that I was strong. And on the days when I wasn’t, you were there.”

Sam gives a small shrug. “I loved you, Cassie. Every bit as much as I do now.”

“I know you do,” she says, her voice just above a whisper. “And I don’t want you to think that I love someone else.”

He sighs, flipping his hand beneath hers, giving her fingers a squeeze, brushing his thumb across the rings he’s given her. “I asked Rob about it once. The two of you. I fancied you and I knew he knew it and I wanted to check - I knew I didn’t have a chance, but I wanted to know if I had even less than a chance. He never gave me an answer - you came bouncing back in before he could.”

“I don’t know what he would have said,” Cassie admits, the corners of her mouth downturned. “I don’t know if there’s a way to say it.”

“I don’t think he would have said much of anything,” Sam agrees. “But I knew he loved you. Takes one to know one, and all.”

She tries to smile at him, her eyes drifting to the bowl. “He was like this, too,” she says, jerking her chin toward it. “And maybe some days I wanted to be the one to put it all together; maybe some days I thought I was the one who could. But you take two piles of shards, and you shove them together… you don’t get the bowl back.” She wets her lips with her tongue. “That’s not to say, Sam - that’s not saying I’m with you because it’s easier. With you, it’s… loving you, that makes beautiful things.”

He squeezes her fingers again. He knows she’s not talking about the bowl.

“She is everything,” Cassie whispers, gripping his hand in turn. “And she’s _ours_.”

“Ours and probably on the dark net by now,” he says. He reaches out and swipes away the lone tear on her cheek, puts a stop to its sad, slow journey toward her chin. He pulls her into his lap, like he did on the day they decided on the possibility of Grace. “God forbid, but I’d say your name too, Cassie, if I thought it was all about to end for me. Yours, and hers.”

She touches her nose to his. “I know,” she says, and he knows, from her face, that it means everything.

Their house, with the kitchen they painted and the fireplace they conceived their child in front of and the plant that still hangs, stubbornly, to life, remains haunted. Rob seems to retreat to the trees beyond their yard, flashes of his long limbs and sad eyes between branches, and Rosalind gets quieter, appearing with less frequency, but Lexie and Katy and Adam and Peter and Jamie - they stay.

They stay, but they never bother Gracie, and she grows up happy and smart and lovely as can be, always kissing Sam’s stubbled cheek on the way out the door, and on the nights when he works late and he attempts to sneak into bed, Cassie always sighs, “Sam,” in a sleepy-sweet voice and jams some part of her body (a limb, her face, her arse) against some part of his, and Sam pulls the duvet over them both, and he makes his peace with their ghosts.

_she knows what i think about_  
_and what i think about's_  
_one love, two mouths  
_ _one love, one house_

fin.


End file.
